Those are just the most pressing problems facing residents of Monmouth Street and Monmouth Place, a stretch of forgotten row homes in the capital city that city councillors say they’ve been fighting for years to restore.

North Ward Councilwoman Marge Caldwell-Wilson said the neighborhood was decimated years ago by a raging inferno that consumed homes. Efforts to clean up the burnt-out block, which many said resembles a war zone, have been fruitless over the years.

“That has been a real thorn in my side,” Caldwell-Wilson said about the neighborhood’s fix-it list. “It’s terrible, and it’s really total disregard for the quality of life of people who live there.”

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Among the issues is a downed telephone pole jutting into the backyard of Monmouth Place resident Danielle Munn. It has been there for years, residents said, perhaps as long as a decade, and the city hasn’t done anything about it.

The wires connected to the pole run across a vacant lot between Munn’s backyard and neighbor Deborah Burke’s home, the thick black cables resembling a makeshift clothesline.

The lines dangle perilously close to the top of Burke’s gazebo.

“If we’re sitting in there and we get a spark, that’s it. I’ve been calling for years,” said Burke, whose been living in her Monmouth Place home since at least 1990.

She gave a reporter a tour of the cozy and neatly decorated inside with a faux-fireplace heater glowing in the living room.

The interior of the home, tucked behind abandoned row homes on Monmouth Place across the street from the Trenton Board of Education building, was a far cry from the outside conditions.

“You get the runaround and that’s it. I’ve called everybody. Everybody at the city knows my name,” Burke said. “The city transfers you from office to office, and nobody knows anybody in the next office.”

Munn once caught her son playfully dangling on the telephone pole line and almost lost her mind.

City spokesman Michael Walker in an interview at The Trentonian office claimed not to “know anything about” the downed pole and suggested it may belong to electric company PSE&G.

“This is not ‘Little House on the Prairie’ where you have a general store downtown,” he said. “This is a city. There are a lot of things that are going on here.”

Residents said they were told the telephone pole belongs to Verizon. When informed of that, Walker responded, “Why aren’t you calling them?”

The city spokesman couldn’t say why the city hadn’t called Verizon to facilitate removal of the downed pole. He told the newspaper some of its questions were better directed to housing and economic development director Diana Rogers and inspections director Leslie Graham. But he couldn’t arrange interviews with them Wednesday by the newspaper’s deadline.

“That’s not how we work,” the city spokesman said. “We cannot work at your speed.”

A Verizon spokesperson asked a reporter to send photographs of the broken and battered beam to help determine whether it belonged to the phone company.

The spokesperson promised to get back to The Trentonian with an answer but never did.

Residents say that’s more of a response than they’ve gotten from the city.

Munn claimed she was told by officials that if Verizon didn’t remove the downed pole “they were going to do it themselves.”

“They put the yellow tape up and said don’t go in the backyard,” she said.

Residents and city councilors contend the city has dragged its feet for years about cleaning up the area.

Caldwell-Wilson said she and South Ward Councilman George Muschal have tried fruitlessly to try to get money from the state to knock down the abandoned homes, many that appear on the verge of collapse with busted-out windows and scarred and charred skeletal wooden beams holding up deteriorating infrastructure.

“It looks like a third-world country, like it was hit with a bomb,” Muschal said, noting he helped get run-down and parted-out cars towed from a nearby lot. “It’s terrible and I’m being nice.”

As if the neighborhood needed more problems, the Trenton Fire Department responded to a fire on the 100 block late Tuesday, Trenton Fire Battalion Chief Clifford Willever said.

A squatter who was inside the abandoned home that went up in flames was flown out with severe burns, firefighters said.

A Dominican man who lives a few doors down said through a translator he feared the fire would spread to his home because of the garbage strewn along the sidewalk, which made for kindling for the tinder-box homes.

“That’s perfect fuel for a fire,” he said.

Another man who lives nearby but didn’t want to give his name stood outside the rain-soaked block littered with plastic wrappers, bottles, worn-out sneakers and other items.

A Big Gulp cup poked out the weeds next to a charred tree the fire spread to before firefighters tamped it down. A black Air Jordan sneaker laid in the wet grass around the corner.

“It’s a shame,” the man said.

Vagabonds took up residence in the home which doesn’t have plumbing or electricity, the man said.

The fire department is still investigating the cause of the fire and didn’t know the status of the burned squatter.

“I’m worried about them squatters breaking into my home,” the man said.

Nowadays, Monmouth Street is notoriously associated with the trunk murder, when a group of men in 2011 kidnapped and killed Liberian immigrant and former Army veteran Dardar Paye in the basement of a home on the street. Alfonso Slaughter had been taken to that same basement but escaped after being robbed.

Despite their pleas for help in restoring the neighborhood, residents still have a hard time getting garbage picked up or lights installed to deter crime and make it easier for them to park in their driveways at night.

“They allow these areas to become blighted so the developers can get it for pennies on the dollar,” Burke said. “As bad as it is back here, it’s still a place to live. We should be respected for at least that much. We pay taxes. We basically handle everything ourselves.”

Once her lease is up, Munn is out while Burke has no choice but to stay and hope for the best. Both have little faith the city will do anything.

“I was going to stay and put in a garden,” she said. “But it’s too much. They’re burning down the abandoned houses. It’s like they don’t care now.”

“They basically don’t want to be caught in the limelight,” Burke said. “Somebody has to have the fire at their feet.”

About the Author

Avilucea has covered courts, crime and coaching kerfuffles in New Mexico, Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Jersey. He prides himself on covering First Amendment issues and was honored for helping fight against a Connecticut judge's prior restraint injunction while he worked at the Connecticut Law Tribune. Reach the author at iavilucea@trentonian.com
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